Jay Jay the Jet Plane


Jay Jay the Jet Plane is an American live-action/CGI-animated musical children's television series created by David and Deborah Michel and first aired on TLC and later moved to PBS Kids, with reruns on Qubo and TBN's Smile. The series aired for a total of 4 seasons and has 62 episodes.
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Premise

The series is centered on a group of anthropomorphic aircraft that live in the fictional city of Tarrytown, taking place at E.Z. Airlines at Tarrytown Airport. The episodes were commonly distributed in 25-minute-long pairs, with one header sequence and one end credit for each pair. Each episode contains one or more songs.
The series was intended to be educational to teach moral and life lessons to young-aged children.

Music

The theme song and all of the other songs were written by the famous children's singer/songwriter Stephen Michael Schwartz and sung by his popular musical group, Parachute Express. The end credits music during the original airings of seasons 1–3 was a reprise of "Gee, How I Love to Fly", which was changed to a new instrumental tune for repeats from late 2001 onwards.

History

Original series

Early episodes using physical models (as "Pilot Series")

In late 1994, a short live-action series was produced at AMS Production Company in Dallas, with real model plane characters and handcrafted human characters; they had the same personalities as in the later series. This original series was narrated similarly to the first twelve seasons of the original Thomas & Friends, or Theodore Tugboat. Three videos were released: Jay Jay's First Flight on December 13, 1994, Old Oscar Leads the Parade on February 21, 1995, and Tracy's Handy Hideout on October 3 of that same year. This original series was narrated by and features the voices of John William Galt; these three were known as the "pilot series".

CGI and live-action-based episodes

On November 2, 1998, the hybrid CGI-animated/live-action series premiered on TLC as part of the Ready Set Learn! block. The show used a handful of animation techniques; CGI was used for the vehicles, the humans are live actors filmed in front of a green screen, the backgrounds are live model sets, and the CGI characters were animated with facial motion capture and joysticks. Voice actress Mary Kay Bergman provided the original voice of Jay Jay, Savannah, and Revvin' Evan. After her death, she was replaced by Debi Derryberry and Donna Cherry.
In 2005, new episodes were produced featuring additional characters, including the red Latina monoplane Lina. Each episode begins with a Jay Jay's Mysteries segment in which Jay Jay and Lina explore things that might be mysteries to the intended age group, such as how planes fly, and how the five senses are used. The "Mysteries" segment is followed by a story that comes from the third season episodes of the series, so in effect, the new season's repackages previously broadcast content on two subchannel networks Qubo and Smile, which were both shut down.

Revival

A new revival of the series, titled The New Adventures of Jay Jay the Jet Plane has been confirmed through Trilogy Animation Group's website. The first trailer for the show was released in July 2022, but a release date was never revealed. As of April 8, 2025, production status is currently unknown and the project could have likely been abandoned due to no further updates since the first trailer was revealed. The characters' were fully redesigned, and made to look more cartoony, newer, and like the original late '90s series, it is to be CGI-animated.

Characters

In the CGI-animated/live-action television series, the planes and ground vehicles are CGI characters, while the humans are live-action actors.
Relationship words for the airplane characters refer to being in loco parentis for purposes of upbringing, and education, not to biological parenthood. The story says that the airplane characters were made in factories.
Some of the stories describe characters as doing actions off-screen that would need foldaway arms ; however, those arms are never seen on-screen.

Young planes

  • Jay Jay is a small "reddish" brown /"ultramarine" blue-colored 6-year-old jet plane and the titular main protagonist of the series.
  • Tracy is a small purple / pink-colored 6-year-old African-Caribbean jet plane who is Jay Jay's best friend/twin sister and acts as a sister figure. She has normal hearing, but understands American Sign Language very well.
  • Snuffy is a small lime green / yellow propeller-driven 4-year-old monoplane who is good friends with Jay Jay and Tracy. He is equipped for skywriting. In episode consistency, one episode says that he has not flown further away from Tarrytown than Lightning Bug Lake, but other episodes show him flying much further. In "Grumpy O'Malley", Snuffy has still not gotten rid of his initial shyness, but in many other episodes, he no longer shows any sign of shyness. In "Snuffy Discovers the Ocean", he had one of his dreams in which he visits the ocean where he is swimming in the water, learning that the ocean is not the best place for a plane.
  • Herky is a small fluent yellow-colored Latino Americans|Latino] 5-year-old European-accented helicopter. In the pilot series, he spoke with a stutter, while in the CGI series, he rolls his "R"s whenever he speaks, and often pronounces stressed "er" as long vocalic "r", e.g. "I'm Herky" as, with a strong, high-rising pitch accent on the last "-y". Herky has skids, and is the only member of the kid group to be shown as incapable of taxiing on the ground.
  • Lina is a red-colored propeller-driven monoplane who is Jay Jay's Spanish-speaking Latina friend and Old Oscar's niece from Mexico. She serves as the supporting character of the Jay Jay's Mysteries segments and is exclusively in CGI.
  • Ricky Rescue is a yellow and red-colored helicopter who appears in the upcoming revival and acts as an older brother figure. He is Herky's twin brother.

Adult planes

  • Big Jake is a dark gray/slate blue propeller-driven transport plane who acts as a fatherly role model to the young planes. He is the biggest, strongest and second-oldest plane in the fleet.
  • Savannah is a silver-colored/light violet-colored Southern-accented supersonic jet who acts as a motherly role model to the young planes. She is the fastest plane in the fleet. She was built in Savannah, Georgia, hence her name.
  • Old Oscar is an elderly gray /emerald green-colored biplane who acts as a grandfather figure. He is the first, oldest and wisest plane in the fleet.
  • Montana is a purple-colored hat-wearing propeller-driven safari plane from the Rockies who is exclusively in CGI and seen two times in Jay Jay's Mysteries.

Ground vehicles

Both of these ground vehicle characters are exclusively in CGI.

Humans

  • Brenda Blue is a woman in blue clothing and usually wears either a red or light blue cap, as well as a pair of red high top Converse. She is in charge of the airport and is the airplane mechanic. She does not use the airport's control tower, but communicates with the planes by a portable two-way radio from the ground.
  • Miss Lee is a deaf and silent librarian at Tarrytown Library who knows American Sign Language.
  • E.Z. O'Malley is the British-American founder of E.Z. Airlines, and his cousins are Grumpy O'Malley, Pierre O'Malley and Tex O'Malley. His last appearance was in Old Oscar Leads the Parade, in which it was possible that he retired from E.Z. Airlines, allowing Brenda to take his place.
  • Mrs. Blue is Brenda Blue's mother, who sometimes visits Tarrytown Airport.

Broadcast and home media

Jay Jay the Jet Plane premiered on The Learning Channel as part of the Ready Set Learn block. Later, it aired on PBS Kids beginning June 11, 2001, with reruns until May 31, 2009. It aired on PBS Kids Sprout from September 26, 2005 until September 2, 2008.
From 2012 until 2014, it aired in Spanish on Telemundo as part of "MiTelemundo". In 2021, it also aired on Qubo for a short time until Scripps' closure and on Smile until its closure on January 12, 2025. Outside of the series' home country, it aired on Channel 5, Discovery Kids, Tiny Pop, and S4C's Cyw block in the UK, Canal+ and Piwi in France, Discovery Kids in Latin America, TV Cultura in Brazil, and Nickelodeon in the Middle East.
In the early-to-mid 2000s, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the series on both VHS and DVD. Later, two Jay Jay's Mysteries episodes were released on DVD by PBS Home Video in 2007.
Religious-based Tommy Nelson also released the series with a new dub on both VHS and DVD.
In 2019, Yippee TV became the sole streaming service of Jay Jay the Jet Plane.

Reception

gave the series a four out of five stars, saying, "Parents need to know that this series offers young fans life lessons such as valuing friends, overcoming shyness, and learning to like yourself. Kids will enjoy the often funny antics of 6-year-old Jay Jay and his friends. Don't be surprised if you catch your preschooler singing along with the show's simple songs."
Retrospective viewers have noted that the character designs for the show often fall into the uncanny valley, and the show is often the subject of ironic memes.